Five months since new Motor Vehicles Act, road accidents come down by 10%

Since the passage of the amended Motor Vehicles Act five months ago, the cases of road accidents have reduced by ten percent in India as informed by Transport Minister Nitin Gadkari. "We have been able to save 10,000 lives," he said, adding that Tamil Nadu has done some good work in this regard.

According to Section 135 of the Motor Vehicle Act, each road accident must be investigated by a team of experts. New Delhi: Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh, Jammu & Kashmir, and Chandigarh have seen around 12-14% decrease in road accidents, five months since the new Motor Vehicles Act was implemented, Union minister of road transport and highways Nitin Gadkari informed the Parliament on Monday.

Gadkari revealed data from 12 states and union territories in the Rajya Sabha, comparing the rate of accidents with that five months before September 2019, when manifold increase in penalties on violation of traffic rules provided by the Act, was enforced.

Among other states, Delhi and Haryana showed a reduction of 1.8% and 1% accidents between September 2019 till January 2020, while accidents in Assam and Kerala increased by 7.2% and 4.9% respectively during the same months.

The states of Maharashtra, Chhattisgarh, Andhra Pradesh and Manipur saw accidents reduce by 5.4%, 4.7%, 6.4% and 3.4% respectively.

Indian roads witnessed 4,67,044 accidents in 2018, which claimed lives of over 1.5 lakh people, data from the ministry of road transport and highways has revealed.

India ranks 1st in the number of road accident deaths across the 199 countries reported in the World Road Statistics, 2018 followed by China and US. As per the WHO Global Report on Road Safety 2018, India accounts for almost 11% of the accident related deaths in the World.

The Motor Vehicles (Amendment) Act, 2019 is expected to bring down the scale of road accidents in India, by way of hefty penalties for violating traffic rules.

Among major changes, the fine for drunken driving has gone up from Rs 2,000 to Rs. 10,000 while driving without the seat belt now incurs a fine of Rs 1,000 as against Rs 100 levied previously. Cab aggregators can now be fined up to Rs. 1 lakh for violation of licensing rules.

Speeding or racing can now draw a fine of Rs 5,000, while overloading of two-wheelers has seen a 20 times jump in penalty at Rs 20,000, including disqualification of drivers license for three months.

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